-Last Post- by Diana:)

I hope you enjoyed all the poems I posted. I posted poems about different topics, so each of you can atleast enjoy one. I love poems, I wish I was good at writing them though. Oh well, I had fun searching for poems. Ive found new poems and I enjoyed them. Hopefully you will start reading poetry.

Well, Later!

:)

Walking Around by Pablo Neruda

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

The Soul Bone by Susan Wood

Once I said I didn't have a spiritual bone
in my body and meant by that
I didn't want to think of death,
as though any bone in us
could escape it. Maybe
I was afraid of what I couldn't know
for certain, a thud like the slamming
of a coffin lid, as final and inexplicable
as that. What was the soul anyway,
I wondered, but a homonym for loneliness?
Now, in late middle age, or more, I like to imagine it,
the spirit, the soul bone, as though it were hidden
somewhere inside my body, white as a tooth
that falls from a child's mouth, a dove,
the cloud it can fly through. Like bones,
it persists. Little knot of self, stubborn
as wildflowers in a Chilmark field in autumn,
the white ones they call boneset, for healing,
or the others, pearly everlasting.
The rabbis of the Midrash believed in the bone
and called it the luz, just like the Spanish word
for light, the size of a chickpea or an almond,
depending on which rabbi was telling the story,
found, they said, at the top of the spine or the base,
depending. No one's ever seen it, of course,
but sometimes at night I imagine I can feel it,
shining its light through my body, the bone
luminous, glowing in the dark. Sometimes,
if you listen, you might even hear that light
deep inside me, humming its brave little song.

Wind by C.Dale Young

But I was afraid then. I remember still
the way my feet skittered up the bamboo,
the way the air held me as the stalks bent
one way and then the other. I remember
the first steps across the tops of trees,
and then the all-consuming speed.
Unlike you, I was lit by anger then,
the least of all warriors. You were there
when the old man first found me, taught me
how to become water. And so much has passed.
River, air, everything passes. They say
the first time you give yourself up to the wind,
there shall be no fear. But I was afraid.
Yesterday, I watched one of my students
scale the bamboo for the first time.
His hands shook only when he returned
to the ground. Now, he wants to know
how to change the wind, this boy
who has only just learned to be carried by it.
Do not laugh. I remember you in the field
so long ago, your fear, your stillness,
the supreme weapon. And I remember you
stripped of your clothes washing the blood
from your feet—you, who keep my heart
in your rooms. Now, the old man says
I cannot move forward until I learn to forget,
that to become wind is to forget even this body.
I have been water propelled across the fields
from the edge of the riverbank. I have been fire
licking back the scrub outside the sad-faced grove.
But this, this final step ... Do not laugh.
Mornings, after you study the indentation
I have left beside you on the mat, when you
walk the bamboo line between field and grove,
do not be angry with me for leaving. Look up.
The wind in the trees betrays more than the wind.

If you forget me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

The Grass so little has to do by Emily Dickinson

The Grass so little has to do –
A Sphere of simple Green –
With only Butterflies to brood
And Bees to entertain –
And stir all day to pretty Tunes
The Breezes fetch along –
And hold the Sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything –
And thread the Dews, all night, like Pearls –
And make itself so fine
A Duchess were too common
For such a noticing –
And even when it dies – to pass
In Odors so divine –
Like Lowly spices, lain to sleep –
Or Spikenards, perishing –
And then, in Sovereign Barns to dwell –
And dream the Days away,
The Grass so little has to do
I wish I were a Hay –
Quotes by Emily Dickinson

"A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day."

"Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality."

"Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough."

"He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust."

"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all."

 

 "I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name."

A Dream by Edgar Allen Poe

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream - that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

Quotes by Edgar Allan Poe

"A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this - that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made - not to understand - but to feel - as crime."

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."

 

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."

 

"Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant."

 

"I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago."

"Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so."

One Inch Tall by Shel Silverstein

If you were only one inch tall, you'd ride a worm to school.

The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.

A crumb of cake would be a feast

And last you seven days at least,

A flea would be a frightening beast

If you were one inch tall.

If you were only one inch tall, you'd walk beneath the door,

And it would take about a month to get down to the store.

A bit of fluff would be your bed,

You'd swing upon a spider's thread,

And wear a thimble on your head

If you were one inch tall.

You'd surf across the kitchen sink upon a stick of gum.

You couldn't hug your mama, you'd just have to hug her thumb.

You'd run from people's feet in fright,

To move a pen would take all night,

(This poem took fourteen years to write--

'Cause I'm just one inch tall).

Quote by Shel Silverstein

“This bridge will only take you halfway there, to those mysterious lands you long to see. Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fair, and moonlit woods where unicorns run free. So come and walk awhile with me and share the twisting trails and wonderous worlds Ive known. But this bridge will only take you halfway there. The last few steps you have to take alone.”

Bus Trip by Susan Mitchell

All across America children are learning to fly.

On a bus leaving New Hampshire, on a bus

leaving Colorado, I sat next to a child

who had learned how to fly

and she carried her flying clenched

inside both fists. She carried her flying

in a suitcase and in a stuffed dog

made of dirt and the places where she had stood

all night listening to the rain. A child sits

on the roof of a house, she dangles

first one leg, then the other,

as if she were thinking

of how America looks late at night

through the windows of a bus.

From a woman across the aisle, she borrows

a mirror, from a woman in the back

a lipstick. Keep it, a voice says.

From a man she takes a cigarette,

which she taps against her thigh.

The man closes his eyes

over her body, such a small body

he could lift it to his mouth

with one hand. In a bathroom she buys a comb

with a quarter borrowed from me

and insists I write down

my name and address so she can return it

from L.A. or from Chicago or from wherever it is

someone she hasn't met yet is waiting for her.

In the dark of the bus she combs her hair.

And what she says to me is a song

that takes only three minutes

to hear, which I accept

like a stick of gum. Now you tell me

the songs you like best,

she says.

And I do.

Phenomenal woman by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.